| Possum
Walk is a shooting Preserve northwest of Huntsville, Texas, just off
1374. Buddy Smith offers hunts for deer, duck, pheasant, chukar,
and quail. This last Saturday, March 3rd, Quail Unlimited put on a
shoot which included skeet, sporting clays, and a dog assisted quail
hunt.
The sporting targets were
on the easy side, and the skeet targets were just that, skeet
targets. It's the quail hunt of which I now confess.
Drake Davis and I would
be the Houston team. Using Freckles, my brittany, we knew we would
take this event in a heartbeat. For those of you that don't know my brittany, Freckles, she has a Master Class nose. As far as I
was concerned, with Freckles hunting for Drake and myself, it was like
having Bobby Fowler shooting on our sporting clays team.
The quail hunt had
specific rules which were briefly explained at the start of each team's
hunt. Each team would be brought to a field where a judge would
observe and time the event. The goal was six downed birds in hand
with eight shots, maximum twenty minutes.
There were more bird dogs
at this event than I had ever seen before. There were pointers,
setters, short hairs, labs, even a couple of other brittanys. Not
to worry, I explained to Freckles, this was just that out-of-town
rabble. If you will, these other dogs were symbolically the
Riveras and Del Toros from San Antonio and the Barretts from Dallas, and
the Hamiltons from Louisiana.. And, besides she was a lot prettier
than any of those other "so called" bird dogs!
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With expectations of a
fast win, we entered the field. The problem with winning this
event, as it turned out, was not with the dog, it was with us! Not
having ever done this before, we started without a plan of attack.
It took Freckles about one minute to transform from everyday house dog
to a bird pointing machine. First point in about two
minutes. Drake missed. I scored. One down. Took
birds two and three in the next couple of minutes. Doing
great. Now a point in the Pine trees. With the weather cold
and raining, the bird was reluctant to fly. A couple of false
starts and then the bird flashes through the Pines like a Maine
grouse. I shoot .... twice .... and miss. This was a bad
deal. We are down six shots and have only three birds. Drake
takes bird four with our seventh shot. Ten minutes have passed
since we started. Another point. Bird flushes. Drake shoots
twice and bird five is in hand.
We start back to the
judge's area. We had only used up twelve minutes of our allotted
twenty minutes. But, we had used one more shot than was
allowed. Figuring the last bird wouldn't count because it was
taken with a ninth shot, we discovered to our dismay, we were
disqualified. Guess we just didn't know all the rules. Only
eight shots allowed, period.
But, hey, we found out
the judge was from San Antonio and the "Riveras" and "Del
Toros" top dogs were going to win no matter what (just kidding!).
Next year Drake and I and
Freckles will be back and make Houston proud.
[by Joseph Barton]
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